Been a little bit since my last post, but, I managed to order both the body and the Floyd Rose bridge together. It made the most sense since Warmoth offers to install the FR's studs into the guitar—no other pieces are assembled, of course. The neck plate is also on order. It was an inexpensive part that would have allowed me to assemble the body and the neck together immediately, although I wouldn't be able to string up the guitar until I order the Schaller tuners. I realized that although I described nearly all of the body specs throughout this blog, I hadn't put them all down in one post like I had with the Neck's Specs post. I won't talk about how much my order cost; it definitely wasn't cheap.
Google image search: inside Warmoth's factory. I would love an opportunity to take a tour through there, as I'm in Seattle and they're based in nearby Puyallup, Washington. Some dude there might be looking at a color palette right about now to choose that seafoam green on my order that I want so badly.
Orientation: Right-handed Core Wood: Maple Heavy and bright with as much sustain as possible. Laminate Top / Unique Choice (Optional): None Because SEAFOAM GREEN. Control Cavity: Top Rout This was a serious consideration described in detail in my third post. I want the controls to be mounted to the pickguard, not through a rear rout. Pickup Routs: Humbucker / Strat Single / Humbucker The obvious choice for a dual humbucker Strat. I'm interested in placing the Sustainiac's circuit board in the center single-coil pickup rout if it will fit and not cause interference with the electromagnetic field. That circuit board would be unseen as it's tucked underneath a pickguard cut for dual humbuckers only.
Bridge Rout: Recessed Original Floyd Rose Tremolo There's a second option in this category to "use studs from bridge on order". Bingo. Input Jack Rout: Strat Top Jack Because a Strat just isn't a Strat without it. Neck Pocket: Strat Shape, Standard 4 Bolt Mounting Holes Body Contours: Strat Style, No Contoured Heel Battery Box Rout: Single Battery Sustainiac needs juice, you know. Finish: Solid Color, Seafoam Green My favorite feature for the body, along with the maple construction, is long-awaited. And for the pickguard: 3-Ply Black/White/Black NO pickguard should be single-ply! Every pickguard should be three-ply or more with a beveled edge! Stop cutting up the knuckles! Humbucker / None / Trembucker Pickup Routs But of course. Sustainiac circuit board to be covered up by the middle section of the pickguard...? I'm happy that Warmoth offers a proper wide Trembucker rout option for the bridge position. Floyd Bridge Cut 11 Mounting Holes I'm not a vintage cat. Gimme the standard eleven holes, not old school eight. Standard Countersink The SRV countersink option adds countersinking to the pickup and pickup selector switch screw points. I just don't think I need it. Tone, Tone 2, 5-Way Selector Switch Routs (NO volume) No volume control rout, as described in the Liberating The Fingers post.
I'm a few months late to the party, but this new song from Sunny Day Real Estate is incredible. Jeremy Enigk's vocals are like those of a ghost of an old sailor with old stories to tell.
EDIT 10/15/2014 The custom black/white/black pickguard and rear trem cover are now on order. The only change I made since this original post was to add the SRV countersink. I decided that the mounting holes for the pickups and the pickup selector switch were a go, since the work done is free of charge and the required undercut screws are available to order on Warmoth's site. I also ordered two dozen pickguard mounting screws (need 17) and the Strat recessed jack plate, which comes with two of its own screws for mounting to the body.
I did not order a jack to go with the jack plate yet; some research will need to be done to pick the right one, both for the size of the body cavity and the type of jack. I wonder if I need a stereo jack to activate the battery when a cable is plugged in. Remember, the Sustainiac remains active even when its sustaining function isn't turned on.
Copper shielding and wiring are also available to order on Warmoth's site, but I will address those things when I can focus on ordering all of the electronics stuff together. I'm well over halfway through this project in terms of cost. Smaller steps—Schaller tuners, Duncan TB-6, potentiometers and selector switch, knobs, battery box, Sustainiac—from here until the end. I might have all of the materials by the end of the year, which is better than I had anticipated when I started this blog. Then two months of assembly and testing, and Big Riff should be fully operational by my 30th birthday in March.
Let's get this out of the way: throughout most of this process I've stalled on the decision to order the body with the recessed pocket for a fully-floating Floyd Rose bridge setup, or an angled pocket for a top-mounted dive-only setup. Then I tested out the Eddie Van Halen D-Tuna in conjunction with the Tremol-No in a best-of-both-worlds scenario, and neither piece could perform as I would have needed it to. The question remained left open—which bridge setup to choose? Full float means notes can be raised as well as lowered, but the maintenance on it can be a royal pain in the arse as the spring tension has to be balanced with the string tension. The angled-pocket top-mount style only allows for notes to be lowered, BUT there's far less maintenance required so long as there's enough tension in the springs to pull the bridge against the body. I should also note here that dropping from a low E to D would be much easier as [hypothetically] I'd only need to unlock the nut and detune from the peg.
Google image search: the angled pocket rout results in the bridge resting on the top of the body.
This has turned out to be the single most headache-inducing detail of the design phase of the build. [Notice how I said design phase; I have yet to actually assemble this thing!] After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that I will be going with the recessed pocket for full-float capability. I've had over four years of practice playing and working on Floyd Rose bridges on two Jackson guitars I've owned, and I love the stability they offer. Also, as far as using vibrato goes, I tend toward a balanced approach by lightly lowering and raising around the note or chord I'm playing; not simply by pulling down on the trem arm. Implementing this capability along with the Sustainiac's infinite feedback function just feels like the right thing to do.
Google image search: This is actually not very off from what I'm going for, except, of course, the maple neck, black hardware, dual humbuckers, and two knobs that I want.
Let's move on. So I found out by mistake, sort of, that the Floyd Rose website offers upgrades and replacement parts for existing bridges, and even has a custom-order form for building a bridge from the ground up. The most common upgrade is the tone block. It's the center of mass upon which the sustaining action of plucking a guitar string happens. I have to admit, I've ignored this key fact for as long as I've had Floyd-equipped guitars and therefore never thought to try anything different. The site offers tone blocks made out of materials like brass, tungsten, stone, and titanium, each with different resonant properties. I am FASCINATED with the new possibilities here.
Google image search: brass sustain block upgrade shown on the underside of the bridge. This will be entirely hidden when it's installed in the guitar. Also, for some reason this photo reminds me of spiders. A lot.
Just for kicks, I decided to run through the custom order form on the site to see what I could come up with, and... The cost ran up over $400 for what I felt was a modest bridge setup with an R3 nut. Surprisingly, their stone sustain block is one of the most expensive available. The "original" Floyd Rose bridge runs for $215-240 on Musician's Friend. I could still go way over the top and order titanium for the base plate ($450), saddle set ($411), locking nut ($305), etc. Can you say, CHA-CHING!!!
There could be some real performance differences by upgrading each of these individual components, but there's an element of restraint pressing in on my brain. Will it make that much of a difference, really? Just how much will it take before I'm satisfied with the result? The quest for tone is a stalwart one, and wrought with much fear over never quite being able to reach that golden sound that's in our ears, and loss of gold [money] chasing after it. After being lost in the fog for a while, though, we need to be reeled back in by Zappa's tender maxim, SHUT UP 'N PLAY YER GUITAR. Turn up an amp to volume eleven, put a foot up on the monitor, and hit that power chord as hard as you can. Because no one but you, and maybe your one or two guitar nerd buddies, can tell the tonal difference between a $500 guitar and a $5,000 guitar. I'm now ready to order the body of Big Riff, but it's sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Warmoth will install the studs for the Floyd Rose if I send them over with my order. I'd rather order the body first, since it's the next most expensive part of the build, but it looks like I need to figure out how I'll purchase the Floyd bridge before I do anything else. There's a lot of rad stuff going on, particularly with full-time school being completely covered financially, but man, I've got some major feels these days.
Having the finished neck with me here at home has been a joy even though I can't play on it yet. It just looks great and helps to solidify the notion that this guitar build thing is actually happening... Because, you know, it is actually happening. Anyway, I've got the neck sitting in my lap as I type this and the little birdies are smiling up at me. Hi there!
But down to business. In my Contrasts And Components post, I presented an image of the body of the Strat with the paint job done and hardware installed on it:
Body of Big Riff, Version 1.0.
But over time, I've gazed disdainfully upon the classic Strat design's one glaring error: that volume knob sitting RIGHT next to where the high E string would be strung, and so close to the bridge that it hinders palm muting. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. I guess I was so bent on getting the neck and the Floyd Rose setup right (more on that in a later post) that it slipped my mind.
I'm pretty sure Leo Fender didn't stop and think, "You know, I bet there will come a day when players want to play very fast and pluck the strings while muting them near the bridge with their palm, with loads of gain screaming out of their amplifiers at high volume. I should probably just do away with one of these three knobs so that those kinds of players can totally go for it and still buy my brand thirty to sixty years in the future!"
Note to guitar manufacturers everywhere: KEEP THE DAMN KNOBS AWAY FROM THE STRINGS. I'm tired of hitting them with my knuckles when my right hand fingers are curled in. I'm also tired of second-guessing that the volume is still all the way up when I have to curl my ring and pinky fingers around the knob when they're flared out.
Palm Mute Exhibit A: Fingers curled in for faster licks. Knuckles make contact with the volume knob.
Palm Mute Exhibit B: Fingers flared out to help anchor the hand down for more expressive, heavier-handed "chunk". Too easy to grab the knob and turn it by accident, pulling volume down.
I may be the tweaker type when it comes to amp and pedal settings, but I never need more than a volume and a tone knob on a guitar, and a three-way selector switch. Well, except for this one thing that's specific to Big Riff: There is an option to wire a knob to act as the driver control for the Sustainiac pickup when it's turned on. Perhaps I thought that I would keep the Strat's three knobs and utilize one of them for this driver controller, which I truly would like to have available on the top of the guitar if possible.
So I want the function of three knobs in two spaces. What to do? The answer may lie in the function of the concentric potentiometer. Basically, it means two pots are crammed together, one on top of the other, with separate terminal sets for wiring. I've never owned a guitar with one installed but they are common enough:
But of course I'm going with black.
I assume that I would simply put the guitar's volume and tone control functions together on the same concentric pot, but I haven't explored what else I could do with it yet. I need to put in some research on rating (I'm assuming I'll need 500K) and the depth on the bottom side so it would mount properly to the pickguard without space complications underneath.
To be clear, I am not fond of and have no plans to use push-pull pots, either for the function of splitting the Duncan Distortion to a single-coil (had that on a Schecter in the past and never used it) or for turning the Sustainiac driver on and off. I want two small switches mounted on the pickguard near the pickup selector: one for the on/off toggle, and the other for the regular/5th harmonic mode toggle.
Body of Big Riff, Version 2.0. Two knobs.
I thought that I had completed the design phase of the guitar build and
would simply move on to the purchasing and assembly phases, but I see now that the design functions of this process remain interwoven into the others. There is still time to make miniscule changes, with the exception of the final decision of what to do with the Floyd Rose bridge as it affects the body design.
I may have a window of opportunity to order the body in either October
or November, so the next post will be devoted to declaring once and for
all what I'll do.
Seahawks football opened with a bang this past week and there was a free
concert by Century Link Field with Soundgarden and Pharrell Williams
(how in the world does that happen?). My girlfriend and I were
in downtown near the action that day but we missed the show. Anyway, I
kept jokingly singing "Rusty Cage" at her and wound up falling in love with the song
all over again:
The neck came in two weeks ahead of schedule! I was bummed at the four-week mark after ordering that it would take at least another month to come in—they corrected me and said that a custom order with a lacquer coat would take 8-10 weeks—but it got shipped to my house right at six weeks. My best guess is that August is traditionally the slowest time of the year for most businesses, especially retail; I could/would have got lucky with timing. Warmoth would have had more time to work on it and ship it sooner.
Having never done anything like this before, needless to say, I was a little bit nervous about how it would turn out. Trusting Warmoth's judgment with the specific planks of 3A birdseye maple they would use was one of the things that concerned me, as well as well what the gloss coat would look like on the finished product. Would I be satisfied?
Yes.
The CBS headstock! Definitely putting a custom logo on it at some point. The two holes drilled at the nut area
are the Floyd Rose neck prep. "R3" denoted. No lacquer there for
better contact with the nut when I install it.
Tuning peg holes drilled for Schaller machine heads.
Gorgeous and evenly-spaced birdseye maple! And that gloss coat is smooooooooth.
The birdseye looks even deeper and more rich on the fretboard than the back of the neck. Black dot inlays are simple. Definitely the right choice.
This is the truss rod system. The allen key hole on
the left is the main adjuster, obviously unavailable when bolted on the
body. The allen key hole on the right is for smaller adjustments. The
directions specify to leave as much slack (and natural underbow) in the
truss rod as possible while the neck is not strung up; otherwise, the
neck can wind up permanently back-bowed. Then you wind it up before install. I'm so thankful to not have to deal with truss rod adjustments behind the nut!
The one thing that I might possibly be miffed about is the fret size. The stainless steel SS6150 frets are finely inlaid, but when I specified "jumbo" I was thinking of the jumbo frets on my Jackson Soloist, which are wider. It's alright, though. The fret height is about the same give or take a few thousandths of an inch, and the scale length is exactly the same. These steel frets should last me a good long time. With that being said, though, I should have done just a little more research on the size. The frets still have lacquer on them left over from the finishing process. I will look into the proper way to clean them up (steel wool, probably) and dress them.
After the failures of my previous post, I'm excited for this project all over again!
An electric guitar is a piece (or set of pieces) of wood with wires and metal attached to it.
Energy is applied by the hands via picking or strumming or tapping of nickel or steel strings, causing a nearby inductor to generate a small amount of electric current. That current can be carried away through more wire to a device which shapes its waveform, amplifies it, and converts that energy into an audible tone carrying the same pitch as that of the plucked metal string.
Why do we care so much? What is it about the sight and sound of this combination of wood and wire that gets us so hyped up? Does a logo and a paint job really separate it from other musical instruments? Why is the [electric] guitar the chosen voice of rebellion and blues? Decades of rock and roll history are founded on it, and every generation has its new set of heroes who will create something new to inspire the next generation.
The physical copy of the cassette/vinyl/CD from the record store, the high-energy live show, the poster of the favorite axe-man hanging proudly in the bedroom, the hours practicing scales and licks, the garage jam sessions, the neighbors calling the cops with noise complaints, that first punk band, the three-song demo recorded in a weekend, the repeated trips to the music store, learning the rules of the load-in, playing local shows, et cetera... Every guitarist goes through this. It's part of the journey, with its victories and pitfalls, and soon it becomes less about the instrument and more about the mess of money, fame (or lack thereof, otherwise known as indie cred), sex, drugs, narcissism, touring, or generally having an excuse not to take responsibility for one's self.
Sometimes it's important to get back to the basics: An electric guitar is a piece of wood with wires and metal attached to it. And I'm wondering how much stock I can put into being angry and disappointed that the combination didn't do what I imagined I wanted it to do.
In short, I had a chance to test out some of the recent hardware I purchased, and I discovered that the Tremol-No is a Tremol-NO-GO. The jury's still out on the EVH D-Tuna. Here's what happened:
Experiment, Phase One: Trem Blocking
The Tremol-No was actually quite easy to install on my Jackson's Floyd Rose bridge. Slacken the strings, pull the springs out of the back of the guitar, remove the the claw plate (I left the original claw plate attached by solder joint to the ground wire because I knew I would be putting it right back), replace with the Tremol-No's claw plate and rod, re-attach the springs, set the shaft and anchor it to the tone block, then tune back up.
The Tremol-No installed. This is the "small clamp" type, not the "pin" type; notice how it latches onto the tone block on the right. The original claw plate and ground wire shown hanging out of the cavity.
The piece tucks away neatly into the bridge cavity without crazy modding or
drilling into the guitar, which is a plus. However, I was not fond at this
point that I had to move one of the springs down and away from where the A string sits on the bridge. In my mind, springs should be focused where the heavier strings (low E, A, D) are seated. And yes, I use four springs rather than three on purpose: it works much better that way when I tune my preferred Ernie Ball Power Slinky string gauge set (.011-.048) up to standard E tuning.
At first, the Tremol-No seemed to work, with a couple of quirks. I could lock the bridge into place, effectively making my Soloist a hardtail. The thumbscrew used for the drop-only mode (on the left) worked too, as long as I cranked it down extra tight and didn't make the mistake of pulling up on the trem arm, which could move it slightly out of place. Trem action in the floating mode stiffened a little, but hey, says I, I'm not a heavy Floyd dive-bombing player.
The thumbscrews have a very short amount of thread and it's impossible to know when to stop turning counterclockwise so that the piston inside can move freely. As a result, a quarter turn too much and they fall out. I also strummed the guitar to the point where they fell out on their own. It's hard to know when you're locked into place. Applying a tremendous amount of torque to the thumbscrews by freehand means there's ample opportunity to move the piston set a few millimeters in either direction, which translates to the tuning possibly being off by a few cents on the meter.
Notice the two black hex screws on the claw plate in the photo. I got the guitar in tune and then tightened them down, and immediately the guitar was noticeably out of tune. This didn't make any sense to me, but I thought that if I were to somehow decide to keep the Tremol-No, I would leave them loose.
Needless to say, I wasn't left with a good impression of the Tremol-No.
And it gets worse.
Experiment, Phase Two: Pitch Alteration
I locked the Tremol-No into hardtail mode and installed the D-Tuna on the top side of the bridge. Again, the installation was easy: slacken the strings, pop the low E out of the bridge, take the screw out, replace with the D-Tuna screw set and reverse the order.
Side view of the D-Tuna, in "D" position. Notice how the bridge saddle is leaning forward.
As I've mentioned before, the D-Tuna doesn't detract much from the total look of the guitar. Once I had a method of blocking the trem—to the best of my ability to crank down those nasty thumbscrews, that is—I focused on calibrating the piece. I loosened the nut screw and manually tuned the low E down to D with the D-Tuna sticking out. The action of sliding the D-Tuna into place is meant to
raise up on the bridge saddle, enough to raise the pitch a whole step
from D to E. However, when I pushed it in for E, of course it was way off.
The D-Tuna pushed in. Bridge saddle leans back to raise pitch but not near enough to get to E.
There's a hex screw in the side of the unit that allows for calibration (the bridge saddle is raised higher), but when I tried working with it, it went all the way to max without reaching E. Also, when it's calibrated at the max height, it's impossible to move.
Hex screw tightened down to raise the pitch even higher. D-Tuna angles downward and is resting on the body of my poor Jackson. At this point, that hex screw is too far in to allow the the thing to freely move anyway.
I tried different combinations of the Tremol-No and D-Tuna together, tightening up screws here, loosening screws there, and nothing worked. The Tremol-No was just way too tweaky, and the D-Tuna was unable to raise pitch from D out to E in.
Conclusion
I sent the Tremol-Noback to Musician's Friend and I'm ready to abandon the idea of a trem blocker altogether. Why not go the cheap route and cut out a block of wood to jam next to the Floyd Rose's tone block when I want to make it a hardtail? Because I might need to have a new wood block with different dimensions every time I changed strings, string gauges, or tuning. Wood expands and contracts with heat and moisture, and having a bolt-on neck for Big Riff won't help in the area of eliminating points of contact that can warp.
I have a suspicion that the D-Tuna's failure is due to the string gauge
on the Ernie Ball Power Slinky set, .048 being just a tad bit heavier
than a medium .046 or a light .042. There's no way I'm changing a string gauge I've played for over a decade to accommodate it. The point of allowing for a modification is to add to an existing preferred playing setup, not subtract from it. Anyway, I'm past the point of being able to return the piece to Musician's Friend, so I get to sit on it for a while and decide to either use it later or put it up on Craigslist. Now I'm back at a previous crossroad: whether the body should have the full recessed pocket for a floating trem setup, or an angled pocket so the bridge will rest on the body just in case I still might be convinced that I can get the D-Tuna to work properly. The latter doesn't have a lot of steam going for it—calibrating it may mean the piece winds up resting on and later scratching up the paint job on the body. I'm thinking that if I want a Floyd Rose bridge in a guitar, that I need to leave it at that. Don't mess with a good thing. Remember: An electric guitar is a piece of wood with wires and metal attached to it. While it's true that I'm building my instrument to my specifications, I see now that there are limitations which, if I tried to push too hard to control, will inevitably drive me absolutely insane. Separate note: I called Warmoth and asked why it was taking so long for the neck to come in. Per their definition, a gloss coat for a neck qualifies as a paint job, which means that it should take 8-10 weeks to complete for a custom piece. I should expect it to arrive in another 2-3 weeks. I'm getting impatient. I really want to see this thing even though I won't be able to use it for months. And now for an extremely timely word from the purveyors of weird, Devo. Because SCIENCE.
The neck is on its way! I ordered the thing a week ago. When I went back over the confirmation email, I saw that I had accidentally ordered 3A Flame maple, not 3A Birdseye. The mistake happened because I had added it to the online shopping cart for comparison purposes, then deleted the wrong wood type. A direct email to Warmoth's sales department cleared things up, but now I'm thinking about how cool it would have been to have flame maple in the neck. Whatever. I've wanted birdseye maple in a neck for a long time by now, so I'm committed to it.
Wait time? This is what the confirmation email reads:
Obviously the neck isn't getting painted, but it will have a gloss coat applied. I don't know what the difference is in the application/drying process for these things, but I have to assume it will take the full two months. Warmoth will send an email with a UPS tracking number once it ships. (And they're in Renton, Washington, so ground shipping should only take one day.)
Alright, so the design of Big Riff is just about about 95 percent finished by this point, but that doesn't mean that there's not much left to consider. I'm thinking a lot these days about the cost of the project and if/how I can finish it by March next year. The neck is the single most expensive piece of this entire build—almost $600 after tax—so I'm glad to have it out of the way early on. The body will cost around $405 plus tax plus the cost of that extra custom routing job I want for the D-Tuna piece when I beg them for it. BUT, I won't order the body just yet.
The Classical: The sum of parts.
So the design of the guitar went like this: Electronics —> Bridge —> Body —> Hardware —> Neck But the actual assembly will nearly reverse the order for purchasing:
Neck —> Hardware —> Bridge —> Body —> Electronics
I need a couple of things to happen before I order the body. Warmoth offers a "stud install" option for a Floyd Rose bridge, meaning that they will drill the holes necessary in the top of the guitar to hold two studs which hold the bolts necessary for the bridge's knife-edge action. You can order the installation with the purchase of a brand new FR bridge, or you can send the studs from a FR set to them and have them do it for you. An original Floyd Rose bridge will cost over $200 (I'm not cutting any corners with a cheap knockoff!), so I don't want to add that to the same order with the body. I expect to be able to install the Floyd's nut on the neck myself since I ordered it with holes drilled through (meaning no special glue job required? I will consult my tech master buddy Mike).
The selected screws are where the pivot or "knife-edge" action happens; they are screwed into the studs, which are anchored into the top of the guitar. Warmoth offers to perform this special installation so I don't have to screw it up myself.
The other thing is to get that Tremol-No piece in ASAP so I can test it out with my Soloist before the big purchase. Not much left to say on that subject. I've already driven it into the ground by this point.
Electronics like the Sustainiac, the Duncan Distortion humbucker, and all of the pots, need to be ordered last because I want/need the finished body first for spatial judgments. Let's not forget that the Sustainiac's circuit board will need to be fitted underneath the pickguard somehow. I'm estimating the total component cost of the build to be somewhere in the ballpark of $1700, with the first $600 out of the way. So, let's say $1100 left to go for the body, bridge, hardware, and electronics. Looking at the scope of time for the build and the range of other things I've got going on for the next eight months—including school expenses and plane tickets—it will be possible, but require some discipline. Still, though, this will turn out way cheaper and much more satisfying once I assemble the guitar myself, with some pro help here and there.
I've been ALL OVER the band Jawbox since I got introduced to them recently. I love the minor/major feel in this song. The '90s truly were a special time for rock music.
I'm feeling really good about this Tremol-No idea. Ideally, I should be ordering and trying out the Tremol-No with my gear at home before ordering the body of the guitar. I was dead set on ordering the body this month as I've mentioned this window of opportunity where I can swing the cash, but I took a second look and it turns out that the neck itself will cost about $100 more than the body. Seems smarter to order the neck first so I can work with that Tremol-No piece before making hard decisions about the body. I called Warmoth and got some answers to some of questions in my Neck's Specs blog entry. Warmoth's "Unique Choice" feature allows a person placing an order to pick a specific plank of wood "for those who just can't take their hands off of the remote control". I'm set on ordering the 3A birdseye maple for the neck and fingerboard; I trust that they will do a good job and leave it at that. No need to pay extra to choose the individual wood plank(s). As for the Floyd Rose prep, R3 definitely seems to be the industry standard to match with the 1 11/16" nut width and 10" radius. Warmoth's site asks for the user to differentiate between the standard neck prep with mounting holes, which means drilling two holes through the neck to mount the R3 nut, or "shelf only", which means that smaller screws are meant to hold the nut down on the top side. It was strongly recommended that I go with the mounting holes for more strength, and I have no problem with going for that since I'll be assembling the guitar myself. I'm about 99 percent sure I will be ordering the peg holes to fit a black 6-in-line Schaller set. There are more machine head versions of theirs than I care to know about; I just want whatever is considered their standard since I will be locking strings at the nut anyway.
Schaller's "Ruthenium" color choice, but of course I'm going with black. You get the idea.
...That leaves the binding and the dot inlays. I've been scoping out photos of binding for maple-on-maple necks and I'm just not inspired. Black binding works with black block inlays (like on the Geddy Lee Jazz Bass), but I think both would detract from the look of that premium 3A birdseye maple. The inlays aren't that much of a priority that I should want some exotic look for them (although black mother of pearl does look pretty sweet); I simply want to match the look with the rest of the guitar. So that means black dot inlays, with no binding. I'm expecting the birdseye wood grain to be served well by this simplicity. I should be ordering the neck this week!
These days I'm thinking about adding some additional embellishments to the guitar. I want to add a couple custom decals for both the front and backside of the headstock. On the back I want the number 15 encircled, because this guitar will commemorate 15 years of playing after I started at age 15 (by my 30th birthday next year, remember). ...A quick Google image search pulled up something very close to what I'm looking for.
Since my first entry, I've really taken a liking to naming the guitar Big Riff, and I'm considering having a label made in whatever original font is featured on the cover of Cave In's Jupiter record. The label would take the place of a traditional Fender logo. Additionally, I want the satellite featured on the same cover to occupy the circular end of the headstock. I need to find someone, preferably local, who can/will do this kind of custom work.
...And here's the original satellite graphic. I thought of getting this as a tattoo years ago, but I think it will work better on the headstock.
This thing is coming together. I can hardly believe it.
It's summer and I have The Cranberries stuck in my head. Guilty pleasure.
